Moby Dick or, The Dragonite
by Xanthous Xyster
Summary: "There is but one Arceus in Heaven and one Pokemon Trainer on this journey." - Ahab. Herman Melville's epic tale retold, if Ahab were a pokemon trainer, and if that great dragon of the sea were a dragonite. In Progress.
1. Pokedex Excerpts

English - Dragonite  
Spanish - Dragonite  
Italian - Dragonite  
Japanese - Kairyu  
French - Dracolosse  
German - Dragoran  
Korean - Mangnanyong  
Latin - Serpens Maris Maximus

Chinese  
Cantonese - Kaibouhluhng  
Mandarin - Kuailong

The following are all the current pokedex entries that have been recorded concerning the great dragon. Even now, I can hear that robotic voice routinely trilling off these lines.

"An extremely rarely seen marine pokemon. Its intelligence is said to match that of humans." -Red and Blue

"It is said that this pokemon lives somewhere in the sea and that it flies. However, it is only a rumor." - Yellow

"Has intelligence on par with people. This 'sea guardian' is said to be capable of flying around the globe in about 16 hours." - Stadium

"It is said that this pokemon constantly flies over the immense seas and rescues drowning people." - Gold and Stadium 2

"This marine pokemon has an impressive build that lets it freely fly over raging seas without trouble." - Silver

"It is said that somewhere in the ocean lies an island where these gather. Only they live there." - Crystal

"Dragonite is capable of circling the globe in just sixteen hours. It is a kindhearted pokemon that leads lost and foundering ships in a storm to the safety of land." - Ruby and Sapphire

"It can circle the globe in just 16 hours. It is a kindhearted pokemon that leads lost and foundering ships in a storm to the safety of land." - Emerald

"It can fly in spite of its big and bulky physique. It circles the globe in just 16 hours." - FireRed and X

"Very few people ever see this pokemon. Its intelligence is said to match that of humans." - LeafGreen

"It is said to make its home somewhere in the sea. It guides crews of shipwrecks to shore." -Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Black, White, Black 2, White 2 and Y

"It is said that this pokemon constantly flies over the immense seas and rescues drowning people." -HeartGold

"This marine pokemon has an impressive build that lets it freely fly over raging seas without trouble." - SoulSilver


	2. Burning Stars

Call me Cubone. Some time ago — never mind how long exactly — having found myself with no marowak for a mother and no comfort of companionship nor general purpose in my bestial life, I decided I would get captured by some trainer and thereby travel with this trainer and their fellow pokemon on a pokemon journey. It is the way of our kind. When we pokemon tire of dark caves and tall grasses, when jumping out at every passing trainer has ceased to bring us joy, and when we have nearly succumbed to being swallowed by that dark hole in our heart which only the warmth of friendship can fill, we cease our futile struggle against a thrown pokeball. We let the capsule encapsulate us heart and soul and body. Thus, we begin to forge our bonds of friendship. As the arms of prisoners are held by bonds of cold steel, and the avaricious poke-bankers by financial bonds, and each human by the bonds of their mortal coil, so too, have we our bonds. Our bonds are those of friendship, both as durable and inescapable as cold steel, as requisite and poisonous to our well-being as gold to the greedy man's, and as a part of ourselves as the body is a part of man.

There is a need in all men and all pokemon to have companions. We hold it of equal necessity to the need for a warm shelter. Shall we not travel countless miles on rainy days through sludge and grimers and muk to fall into either the waiting arms of a friend or atop the steadfast legs of a bed near a warm fire? And do we not experience that same warmth in our heart when we stand among friends as we do when we stand near a fire?

But which is the more important? Which is the more dear? The warmth of friendship or the warmth of a fire? And do we feel that warmth in our heart from companionship because it reminds us of a fire or do we feel the warmth from a fire because of the companions we share it with? Perhaps, you find my last question extravagant, but perpend.

Picture the campfire. There is something magically disarming about that campfire that makes complete strangers circle round and there remain long into the night disclosing innumerable personal tales to those other fellow venomoth all drawn to that same flame. Is it that warm fire or those warm hearts of all around the fire that creates this moment?

Is fire, indeed, the mother of civilization and invention? Or did people coming together as a civilization create the fire?

Man's fascination with fire is no wondrous revelation. It has forever been a central part of man's life. Their ancestors strove to keep a constant fire burning in their hearths. The Greeks placed the goddess Hera, the goddess of the hearth, among the holy pantheon as both sister and wife of almighty Zeus, and they named fire as the quintessential substance, which once stolen from the gods, enabled the birth of mankind. Indeed, even the great first of philosophers, Heraclitus, insisted that it was fire from which all things took form and that all elements, all people, and all pokemon are merely variants of that single type and power.

But, you say, fire does not belong solely to man. Does not the wild, fearsome charizard exhume fires hotter than any a normal man could make? And does not heatran's blood boil like burning magma as it circulates through its own body? Isn't fire one of the recognized eighteen types of pokemon and as much a part of pokemon as an object of man? Then, of course, fire must be something that we share, something that is both of man and of pokemon.

As it is, both fire and friendship belong not solely to man nor to pokemon, but to both.

Friendship is that eternal flame, moltres, ranked highest among those three legendary birds that fills all our lives with meaning and drives us to greater heights, supported by the crescendoing updrafts of our ardent friends. Indeed, friendship between a pokemon and a person is no covalent bond, but a fierce, unbreakable ionic bond and a great fire. Will eevee not respond equally to the acquisition of friendship as to the application of a fire stone? In both cases will eevee not evolve? Yet, friendship and fire are even more inseparable than that. In a chemical reaction, it is a required heat that forces the reagents over the reaction point and thus triggers all things necessary for life. And for that eevee or a togepi or an onix or any myriad of others, it is the great heat of friendship that forces them to react and completely changes their structure in an evolution. It is the fire and the friendship. It is both as one.

Fire is friendship, and friendship is fire. They are and have been inseparable ideas, throughout our histories.

And thus, dreaming of fires and friends, did I, in my tower of east Lavender Town, set out to find warmth as so many others had before me and so many more shall after me. I admit that in my dark tower, cold and lonely, I knew little of how bright a fire could blaze and little of the perils that awaited me. Yet ignorant or not, as I then exited the tower, my terrible fate hung in the ominous stars above me, and my fate was akin to those great burning stars, too hot to withstand up close, but soft and tempting to gaze upon from the shelter of distance. Both fire and friendship will burn you, if you let yourself get too close, and no fire is fiercer than the fire of dragons.


	3. The Held Item

I began my trek across the circuitous Route 8 with a cool, nighttime breeze slipping through the cracks of my skull helmet and with my firm right hand gripping my thick club. It has been an enduring habit of mine to never go anywhere without my helmet nor without my club. Indeed, I have difficulty understanding the pokemon who have perfectly dextrous hands but go about empty-handed. While trainers, who carry a bag capable of holding nearly unlimited items, might see only the difference of 1 between carrying one item and no item, to a pokemon it is all the difference in the world. If all the pokemon were classified as a society of the wealthy and the impoverished, or the haves and the have-nots, and this classification took into account our one held item cap, why, then all those with a held item would be of the highest and most affluent class while all those without a held item would be of the poorest and most destitute class.

For myself, I carry a thick club. More precisely, my so-called thick club is really a weighty humerus which has been shaped and grooved for use as a club. This bone is like my best and only friend, always there to support me and a welcome boon in any fight. It doubles my attack in addition to doubling as a walking stick. Furthermore, my thick club, along with my skull, holds a warm place in my heart, as both the skull I wear and the bone I hold were once my mother's.

Anyway, with my mother's remains functioning as my sole possession and accoutrement, I set off to find companionship. On the route so late at night, I met few others, but that was as I had expected and desired.

Now, I was desperate for real friends, but not so desperate that I'd settle for any young scamp who knew how to throw a pokeball. Rather, I imagined I'd prefer the stalwart direction of a veteran trainer. There are white-haired shiftry that will ramble on about the value of growing tall alongside a young sprout, sharing mistakes and triumphs, until both you and your trainer together have grown into one massive tree. However, if possible, I would skip having to endure my trainer's awkward learning curve. No thank you, says I, I respect your wisdom, Shiftry, but I'll not be caught by a trainer who indiscriminately throws for a bidoof at the same time he casts a pokeball for me. Let me take the brunt of a hyper beam and suffer an excruciating death, I will have no bidoof for a traveling companion, by Arceus, this I swore. No, nor rattatta, nor zigzagoon, nor sentret. I intended to join a strong and determined trainer, well along on his journey, and I would do so in Saffron City.

We pokemon have a way of choosing our trainers as much as trainers have a way of choosing their pokemon. We meet in our nests, we pass along rumors, we map out what kind of trainer is where and what pokemon they are looking for. Of course, not all pokemon are captured as they please, but the system generally works. Upon arrival in Saffron City, my first step would be to seek out one of these local nests and from there scrounge out information.

Though I have frequented the city many times since, it was then my first time in Saffron City and upon passing from Route 8 through the city gates, I let myself wander through the streets as I gazed upon building after building, oddly struck by how much I felt a love for the city wax within me. Everything about the city immediately repulsed me, but yet somehow, counterintuitively, I liked it more and more, the more I wandered. For those of you unfamiliar with the city, I will endeavor to here describe it. Within the boundary of Saffron City, there is not a single living tree. Its trees are dim-yellow streetlamps and golden skyscrapers, and some of the latter loom taller than even the monstrous White Treehollow of Unova. All the earth is paved. Where there isn't road, there are yellow-colored brick paths. And as if in some effort to keep all sight of the natural world from the inhabitants, ringing round the city are tall saffron-painted walls. In short, it has the worst aesthetics of any city ever. Yet there is something profoundly spiritual and alive within this garish, omnipresent yellow jungle, like the life force strong within those saffron-clad Buddhists of foreign Asia.

Take a long stroll down Mimic Avenue when the bright yellow sun is high above you. Note the establishments and the people and the streets, all shining as gold and bright and alive as that great, gaseous, life-giving, power source above. In this artificial city, there exists a soul more alive and natural than any creature born of nature. You see, Saffron City is one of those cities so terribly and completely removed from the natural world that its inhabitants make a concentrated effort to reestablish their connection to nature just to maintain their own sanities, and there is a life created in their effort that is made all the more vibrant by its strength of assertion. You can feel the manifest longing for nature in their fighting and psychic gyms, in their pokemon fan clubs, in their large printed name Silph Co. plastered across the tallest skyscraper, as if erected as a towering billboard inviting all sylphs to gather, and that selfsame company's interior fountains, that all serve to return the natural life to this unnatural city. No place of nature ever asserted its own attachment to nature as this city does.

And Saffron City's devotion to a concept so external to itself struck me then as I wandered wonderstruck through the city's alleys. This city was perfectly colored to embark upon an adventure from. Why would anyone journey with an immature sprout or a blank page or a boy fresh out of Pallet Town with yet no philosophy to color his journey? The residents of Saffron City yearned for an adventure and for the experiences available only outside their wall. Their souls craved the delights of nature as only those removed from nature could. A blank page or palette goes on a journey to learn about the world, while a person with the so-called-saffron mindset goes forth to adventure because an adventure is the culmination of every fiber of his being. I knew that if there was an adventure to be found, I'd find it here.

As I passed by them, I took note of burrows and nests, those secret hideouts where pokemon congregate, keeping my eyes open for something suitable. I found The Roost, but the entrance was much too high for a non-flying type pokemon. There was also Munchlax's Viking Buffet whose entrance was a hole in an alley with a persistent smell of poke-food pungent in the surrounding air, but after sticking my skull inside, I found the place devoid of patrons. Different pokemon keep different hours, I sighed to myself and resumed my search.

A little farther down the alley, I happened upon the queer outline of a door carved into a metal wall. There was no handle on the outside and it would have been impossible to notice in the dark alley without my keen nocturnal vision. A large rocket was painted in a vibrant red spray paint across the alley wall. Ahah, thought I, is this some sign of the starry heavens, some rocket set to blast me off towards my fate? Though never had I heard of a door being used as an entrance to a pokemon nest, the door's clandestine shape and my own innate curiosity quickly persuaded me to investigate whatever might be hidden behind it.

I started by edging my chubby fingers around the frame of the door, but I could find no way to grip it. Next, I used my club to rap gently against the door. Metallic tings echoed through the alley at my rapping, but no one came to answer my entreaty. Finally, I crouched into a grounded stance and unleashed my strongest bone club attack against the door. The door dented with a loud thud but didn't yield. I was readying myself for another attack, when the door slid to the side with a whoosh of wind.

Some sort of hydraulics? What sort of place is this? I wondered as I peered within. In answer, black jumpsuits and a mass of nondescript faces sneered at me from within. Red R's like the red of the painted rocket were plastered on each of their suits, and many were fingering the pokeballs at their waists as if ready to do me harm. Despite the cool breeze, I began to feel quite hot. I was familiar with Team Rocket, a reprehensible gang of the Kanto region, and I was not pleased to stumble upon them. Long repressed memories of my mother's brutal murder nearly welled up within me.

Swiftly, I turned and left. Only trouble, or make that double trouble, could come from associating with this rabble. No, I would not try to reach for the sky with this Team Rocket. No, no, I am a ground-type pokemon, after all, and as it is, I'm in no great hurry to meet my fate. I would not give them the chance to send my soul up to the heavens just yet. After all, my earthly adventures were just beginning. So after much scrambling and sprinting and an extended period of hiding in a dumpster, hyperventilating, and crying till I was assured no Team Rocket member was out for my life, I once more returned to my search for a nest from where I could find my future trainer.

I soon found a sizable nest in a rundown apartment building. This particular building was located in the western slums of Saffron City just next to an abandoned pokemon center. Garbage littered the streets and as I drew near the building, I felt a feeling of comfort wash over me. Though the area was, indeed, in the slums, the humans' slums are pokemon's wealthiest districts. It is only in abandoned buildings like this apartment that pokemon could have entire rooms or floors to themselves. This nest was a prized location and the cheerful scampering of various pokemon enjoying themselves within was audible up and down the street.

The nest's name was The Will-o'-Wisp. What an odd name, thought I. Is this suggestive of the warmth of friendship I seek or shall I be here burnt by this nest? Does not the name allude to those jack-o'-lanterns, those fiendish fairies who with their fleeting light lead late-night travels into bogs or off of the precipice of cliffs? This will-o'-wisp is that same dancing death-fire, which Coleridge spoke of, and aye, it was in his poem that this fire burnt the water itself all sorts of frightening colors. Alack, I feel chills at the thought of this burning flame! This is no fire for young Cubone.

But avast, Cubone. You forget yourself. For that mystifying will-o'-wisp is also named the ignis fatuus, or the foolish flame, and it is only fools that are led by some ghostly flame unto their death. And will-o'-wisp is a common enough fire-type move. And there are, as you know, a good number of fire-type pokemon on the nearby routes. Perhaps the name is not so strange as all that you imagine.

Calm yourself and for the time being, let us cease imagining, so that we may enter and discover for ourselves what sort of place this Will-o'-Wisp is.


End file.
